Stop those annoying registration boxes that won’t go away
Have you recently installed a system utility or a productivity application such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Dreamweaver and have been bombarded with registration messages that pop-up every time your start the application? Even when you check the box and tell the application never to remind you ever again?
This happens to me all the time and is very annoying. The culprit of this problem is… you guessed it, UAC!
Your application keeps asking you to register because the registry key that it checks to see if you should still be harassed into registration is never getting set thanks to UAC. When I check the box or hit the Never remind me again button the registry write gets virtualized because the app tried to write to a part of the registry a standard user does not have access to. This is a feature of UAC and it does a great job of redirecting the registry write so the application does not crash out. However, since the application is not aware of this virtualized write location it keeps checking the registry value of the key in the normal location. Since the application has read only access to that location the key will keep getting virtualized every time you check the box and is why the registration boxes keep popping up.
How do you get out of this mess? Real simple, just run the application as an Administrator. This time UAC will not be in the way and the app will be able to write the never annoy me ever again with this stupid registration box key setting.
This simple trick will also work for some applications that pop up other information and do not respect the stop annoying me again option.
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Tags: Windows, windows vista
Frustrated Photoshop user on 01 Jun 2007 at 9:56 am #
Hi, I am always logged in as administrator on my computer but I still get the registration popup every time I open Photoshop CS2, (running Vista Business). I kept hitting do not register. Then I gave up and registered but it still keeps on coming. Didn’t there use to be a tick box saying ‘don’t show this message again’?
Any help would be much appreciated. It’s driving me crazy
Jens on 14 Jun 2007 at 4:30 pm #
Oh, thank you, great dude! I thought I was going to have to go postal on Adobe, or is it Microsoft…
Ryan on 17 Jun 2007 at 11:44 am #
Hi!
I’ve searched all over for a fix to this! I knew about the administrator thing but never pieceed it all together!!
Thanks for eliminating a very very very annoying problem!
Marky on 14 Sep 2007 at 5:42 pm #
just like “Frustrated Photoshop user Says”. When I’m not even doing anything on my Windows Vista computer it randomly pops up, I am the only user/administrator and when I click the circle “Do not remind me anymore” it ignores my request and still comes up a short time later.
Fur on 08 Oct 2007 at 11:03 am #
Awesome. This has been bothering me for months. Thanks man, your a hero.
Jay Dubster on 10 Dec 2007 at 12:02 pm #
Thank you jeebus !! This darn “register” box has been buggin the heck outta me since I went from PS7 to CS2 on my work pc (Win XP). A bit unauthadox, but I ran the photoshop app file as admin, let it start as per, clicked “do not register” and let it finish accessing the HD. Closed my Admin rights box, started CS2 & WOOHOO no darn Register box !!
You guys totally rock - An aggravation gone from every day. Thank you
Bacan on 17 Oct 2008 at 12:10 am #
you are the man!!!
Thank you so much for your help!!!
For those of you that want direct instructions:
Go to the control panel in Windows Vista
Go to User Accounts
Click in Turn User Account Control on or off
Uncheck Use User Account Control
Click Ok
after restarting try again in the registration window. Click on never remind me again.
Put the user account control back on, and restart again!!!
DackR on 24 Oct 2008 at 9:17 pm #
What Bacan suggested will work, but is more than is necessary.
For Vista:
Right-click on the shortcut icon for the program.
Click Run as administrator.
UAC asks for permission/credentials here.
Once the registration window pops up, click do not register.
Close the app.
That’s it.
Thanks for the post, this has been bugging me since upgrading to vista.
Never even thought about it.